It is a significant fact that the mere quality of our ships was poor. The superiority of the French shipbuilding, already noticeable in the reign of Charles II., was maintained for long. When Spain began to revive under the Bourbon dynasty she also constructed vessels far superior to ours. In the year after the renewal of warfare in 1739 a Spanish 70-gunship, the _Princesa_, which however only mounted 64 guns, was taken by three English vessels of the same rate. It cost them five hours and a half of fighting to get her, and although this no doubt speaks well for her captain and crew, her long resistance to apparently overwhelming force was largely due to her fine build. She was of 1709 tons, whereas English vessels of the same rating were only of 1225; therefore she would be stronger and could carry a heavier battery. Her lower deck ports were higher out of the water, and could be worked when ours had to be closed in bad weather. The inferiority of our ships, rate for rate, to the French and Spanish had been noted before, and had produced some effect, but the capture of the _Princesa_ gave a much needed stimulus. Nor was it only in size, and what depends on size, that our ships were inferior. Their lines were poor, so that they were crank (_i.e._ liable to overturn) and sailed badly. To some extent this inferiority of our models was due to economy. The Admiralty made its vessels of weak scantling, that is with a minimum of timber, and preferred to patch up old ships rather than build new ones, and therefore perpetuated inferior types. This was also part of the general slackness of the time. We were content to be guided by routine, and to leave the building of our ships in the hands of shipwrights who were mere artisans going by traditional rule of thumb.
The difficulty of knowing what sort of men the officers and crews of our old navy were is very great. They have left small record of themselves, and they were too remote from the general life of their time to come under the notice of ordinary witnesses. The pictures we do possess of them are mostly drawn by satirists of whom one only, Smollett, was a man of genius and had personal experience. Unfortunately his spirit was bitter, and his purpose led him to pick out mainly the most extravagant and worst parts of his subject. Records of courts martial, again, tell a good deal, but it is necessary to remember they also are of the nature of selections of the worst. It was the bad not the good officer who came before a court martial. Pamphlet controversies reveal something, but once more it is the worst. That our navy sailed the sea in such bad ships with comparatively few disasters is proof of its seamanship. That its fighting was on the whole successful, in spite of absurd rules and of defective intelligence in leadership, shows that though the head lay wrong, the heart was right. All the materials were there, they only wanted better handling.